The Crow God and His Apostles
by debt
Summary: Satisfaction came from a job well done. There was never a need to understand, and they never pretended to. {A tale of Red narrated by both his Pokémon and several significant others. For the Chain Reaction Challenge.}
1. i: double life

#4: charmander

* * *

><p>The boy looks at it with those cold red eyes of his, studying it with a surgeon's intensity and fixation on detail. Oak stands next to the dimly-lit dais while the laboratory lights palpitate arrhythmically overhead, scratching at a spot on his wrist and feeling the seconds trickle by like sand. His grandson Gary is irritable and fidgety; the professor, on the other hand, is as patient as he wishes to be.<p>

"What is it?" he finally asks.

"Well, it's a Charmander, Fire-classification, number four in the Kanto Pokédex-"

"I don't mean _that_," the boy cuts in. "I want to know what it can do. What its strengths and weaknesses are. What it's _worth_."

Red's tone shifts almost imperceptibly, a hint of a challenge rising through the placid exterior as he touches the little dragon with a gloved finger. It snorts a match-sized flame through its nostrils, testing its potential master with combined senses touch, smell, and taste. Oak, nonplussed and in a strangely confident mood, decides to take his guest at his word.

"It evolves into a charizard with the right amount of training. When it does, you'll hardly find a better form of transportation other than a dragonite, and unless you've got ties with the old dragon clans, there's a slim chance of you ever getting your hands on a dratini, much less finding one in the wild." Red still seems unfazed, so Oak continues. "They're loyal. You take a charmander and you raise it until it grows up, and it'll die for you. It's an apex predator; you can't put it to sleep, you can't stop it with paralysis, you can't cripple it with poison, you can't put it out with some water and ice or crush it with stone. Teach it to battle, and you've made yourself a killing machine.

"Oh, it's surly. Arrogant. Patronizing, if you can't discipline it when it starts getting bigger and tougher. It does have dragon ancestry, after all. It's a mess to raise at times. Few veteran trainers have ever found themselves up to the task. Fewer still have ever won against a charizard at its prime."

"Except for Lance," Gary chimes, smirking, "the first to do both."

Oak listens as Red makes his decision. He takes the Pokéball and holds it out.

"Good luck."

* * *

><p>Outside, the young charmander blinks. There is a sharp light carving through the mounds of green and rough brown, and the rocks are rough beneath the soles of its feet. Here it is warmer than it was in the dark space, and the human with the black fur is sitting next to it. The human proffers a finger again, which the charmander sniffs and sneers at. It wags its tail, sending tiny embers dancing toward the extended digit.<p>

"Listen to me," the human-boy says. "You're mine now, so you'll do as I say. If I tell you to sit, you will sit. If I tell you to fight, you will fight. You will obey only my orders and my orders only, unless I say otherwise."

Still disdainful, the charmander spits a gout of smoke at the human and turns to bolt, but before it can take so much as a single step an impossible weight settles around its tail-flame and refuses to budge. It shrieks and goes into hysterics. It hisses magma and claws at the boy's hands and does everything it can to get free, but the boy holds tight and does not let go. Ever.

Eventually, it stops thrashing and looks at the human with resignation. It knows it is beaten. Softly, the human takes it and cups the small body against its chest. The charmander hears the sound of a heart and feels the heat of skin. It laps at the boy's neck and nicks with its teeth, drawing a bead of blood. It shivers and mews softly. The boy smiles.

Soon, it goes back into the blackness, and the boy picks up his satchel and leaves.

They do not come back for a long time.


	2. ii: life time

#196:espeon

* * *

><p>After she gets the call, his mother spends the day at home cooking and cleaning. She scrubs every room until it glows, then picks vegetables from the garden and tosses them in a bowl with dressing for salad. From her butcher, she purchases two male pidgey, already plucked. She cuts them, ties them with string, rubs the meat with herbs, and sets both in the oven to roast. There is nothing left to do but wait, so she sits in the living room (so dusty in here, it feels like, even though she has spent the morning through the afternoon wiping down every surface she can find) with a cup of coffee.<p>

Outside, the sun is setting. She chews her bottom lip and watches the leaves blaze gold and orange, then fade into indistinct shapes as the light is slowly leeched away by the coming of the night. In that time, she doesn't take a single sip. She is asleep, the cup still full but gone cold and greasy, when her son enters. He smells the roast, sees the dining room set with fine plates and silverware, and his mother curled against a green cushion, folded in on herself. At his feet, the espeon purrs and twines around his feet, pushing the door shut with a gentle bit of will.

He goes upstairs, to his room, and takes his blanket of thick wool. He drapes it over her, careful not to wake her up. He goes outside and sits on the porch.

"She looked older than I expected," he confesses to the feline. She lays her head on his lap while he talks, her ears alert to capture every word he says.

"I wish I had stopped to tell her I was leaving. She knew, but a goodbye would have helped. She felt unhappy. Lonely. The house felt lonely." He looks down at her, and she looks back. "What do you think?"

His espeon makes a sound that might be compared to an exasperated sigh. Her master is a good man, a kind man, but there are times when he can be especially thickheaded in regards to matters of emotional delicacy. So she, a natural empath, helps him navigate. It's not a fault of his own, but the result of an accident; he cannot be blamed for something that was not in his will to control. She is his seeing-eye guide for dealing with the people he cares for. She makes sure he doesn't push them all away. She is afraid that he might be regressing, and the outcomes she sees branching off from the possibility of her master going into total isolation are ones that she, at least, doesn't find preferable.

Though she cannot communicate with him in his odd language, they have enough of a psychic banter between them that she can speak through images and sensations, voicing her disapproval of his choice to leave Pallet Town without an appropriate farewell and chiding him for his lateness. She accesses the olfactory part of his brain and makes him recall the smell of the cooling roast, then directs his attention to the sight of his mother on the small polyester couch. How withered she appeared at first. How gaunt her hands were, the hollowness of her cheeks.

"I'm sorry," he snaps. "It was a mistake."

Shows him a mailbox, empty. The driveway covered in snow. Coffee. A table. There is pain.

"I'm sorry."

She presses into his side, her split tail curling over his bicep. Looks at him and apologizes for overstepping her boundaries. He is hurt; she can see that and grieves for him. Tenderly, he strokes her fur. _Sorry. _And the ache goes away.

That night, there is a full moon. He sleeps on his bed. There is little here that still remains from his childhood, and the space they formerly occupied have been filled in by a strange lack of joy, a crawling, blind-eyed melancholy. It seeps into him and he cries out, but she sleeps with him and the fire of her body helps keep him at peace, far from the sinister routes inside the forest of his mind.

The town sways and extends its arms to him.

_Welcome._

There is pain in the soil of this earth.

* * *

><p>She rises and her joints wince and her shoulders are cold. There is hot tea in a chipped red mug and the smell of oatcakes in syrup and eggshells being cracked into the sizzle of a frying pan. As if in a trance, she walks towards the boy, breaking the threshold. He turns and he looks surprised.<p>

"Mother."

Sun breaks through the curtains, casts the shape of his smile. Sluggishly, she moves to embrace him. He hugs her in a tangle of long limbs and she kisses his pale face. Her son, blood and bone. All uncertainty fades as she runs her fingers across his cheeks, through his inky hair - this is real.

"It's been...ages," she breathes. She is so unsure of what to do. He barks a short laugh - _and where did he get that? When did he look so wolfish, so lean? Who taught him? _- and leads her to her seat. A tremble goes through her like a whiplash.

"Come sit. I've made you breakfast."

Says this of the cuckoo clock, the worn floorboards, the familiar hard chairs and his mother's grin and the purple cat and the home that loved (loves) him so,

_Welcome._


	3. iii: time you

#3:venusaur

* * *

><p>He has walked with the human since he was young, a newborn bulb, as he walks with him now. The human has taken him and two others, the mountain beast and hard sea-creature, to these caves. The three of them shelter the boy from harm, and the boy leads. The old venusaur feels a surge of pride as the boy takes them forth, deep into the blue gemstone caves; they have always walked with him, and he has always led them to greatness.<p>

650, 651, 652.

Once, he was a bulb. Now, the flowers on his back are thick and his muscles are strong. He feels no fear.

758, 759, 760.

The boy counts. Bats, perched on the tips of stalactites and conversing amongst themselves, direct their penumbral eyes to the passage of their party of four. Some stragglers, cocky lean ones with a thirst for blood, swoop down occasionally. The sea-creature weathers their blows with fortitude, while the fat mountain beast snatches the slow ones and eats them whole, chewing noisily on the wing membranes. He allows the boy to duck under his shade, batting away the nuisances with his vines. They burst in foul sprays of ichor, which roll down the broad leaves of his flora and drop hissing to the cavern floor. His human sprays a cooling liquid on his skin and urges him on.

888, 889, 890.

Gradually, the terrain becomes rougher. Denser clusters of the blue stones spring up, choking the pathway. There is a nuance to the air in the caves, a thickness that makes his flowers curl and shrink. The beast is restless; twice he must reprimand it with hard lashes to the chest, doggedly forcing it to move.

903, 904, 905.

His breath begins to labor as the path inclines steeply. The boy pats his flank and when he takes a step, it is with a stitch in his side. Still, they make progress. And it is when he feels his age pressing down on him all at once, when the toxicity from the combined bites of over a hundred barbed teeth registers and climaxes with frightful agony, they enter an atrium filled with pools of clear water and lit by fabulous crystal growths, their facets reflecting light from an unknown source. On the remains of a long-dead animal, there sits a tall being, long and beautiful. Around it are corpses smoldering with purple fire. His human leaves his shade and the tall thing stands. Its eyes prophesy doom.

The venusaur trembles and feels, acutely, the stirrings of a profound truth: he is going to be killed here.

910.

.

_Why did you come here? _it asks. Its voice is storm-like, rumbling; when it speaks, the cavern flinches.

"I am going to destroy you," says his human, and he startles at the sound out of surprise. His human is speaking and he understands what the sounds mean, clearer than ever before. Unexpected. He snorts and makes to charge at the pale thing, but his human stops him. "Hold still," says the boy, and he is still.

_This is not a place for your kind_, says the creature. _If you do not leave, you will die. I have killed men before, and I will do it again._

"I'm not going to leave."

_Do you doubt me, child? _A ripple of amusement dances through his mind, then scatters. _Look around you. They were strong animals, hardy beasts that braved through more obstacles than you did to reach me, seeking a boon. I slaughtered them with a thought._

"I didn't come here for a favor. I came because this is something I need to do. Don't overestimate your importance, clone." He spits. "You're a mistake. A cheap copy of the original god. The last mess I have to clean up."

_Yes. _And now there is a hint of laughter from the god – because he is sure that it must be divine, to be able to command such power as to reshape language and voice – as it rises slowly from its terrible throne. Dust and ash peel away from it, and beads of springwater crystallize into hard gems of ice.

_I knew of you, child, long before you stepped foot in my domain. I have known you since you were lost in the forest and cried for help and none answered you but the baying of hounds and the screams of the wild. I have known you since you defeated my creator. You have weathered much to arrive at this point in time. And you think that I will lie here and bow my head, and you will kill me, and that will bring you peace._

"Yes."

_Boy._

Cutting disdain. A lance of sound in that dim chamber. So sharp it ruptures something inside of him, and a flower abruptly curls inward – pained, screeching.

_Flawed I may be, I still exercise control over numerous things in this flimsy world, and the wills of lesser beings are mine to bend and shape as I please. Here, I have grown strong. In my veins, I hold the blood of Mew the Great Mother, Shaper of Creation. I tear down cities and kingdoms and palaces and kings. I am devourer of life, bringer of death, ruination and damnation. _Lightning crackles, and muted thunderclaps echo in the tunnels. _I do not yield to humans. I do not submit to anyone._

A long and hideous wail wrenches through the space between the god and his master, who falls to the ground and quivers, inconsolable. The very foundations of the room quake as the god turns to him and asks, _Why do you travel with this human?_

In the blink of an eye, the stone cliffs and jutting formations fade into pure nothing, black and cold like no place that could ever be real in the universe, save for the churning matter from which nightmares are born.

_Look at you, _it says. He watches as his companions, the mountain-beast and the sea-creature, lunge forward, baring claws and teeth. The two pause in mid-stride, faces frozen as veins of craggy rock climb up their bodies, devouring them in an instant. Where they once stood, a pair of rough forms now tremble before splitting apart and dissolving into so many granules of sand.

_Weak_, it says. He howls and forms forests from the void, trees and vines and poisonous blooms spewing their toxins into the air sweetly, binding it to the nothing-place. He feels anger, and grief, and so much pain. Whips of violet energy crackle, slicing through the foliage with ease, and tossing the darkness into a frenzy. Chilling waters lap at him, casting him into a deeper of ocean. And there are all manner of wicked things lurking in these deeps. Desperately, he tries to draw the liquid into his back, but the first sip is bitter. Evil. He flounders while it floats towards him, hovers above his head like an executioner.

_You will not stop me, _he gasps. _I will live. I will awaken from this dream. You will pay dearly, young god._

_Foolish, _it snarls. _You came from pathetic stock. You ally yourself with this boy, who is now caught in his own madness. Madness that I awaken, with but a tiny sampling of my will. Shall I break you as I broke him? Or shall I leave you here to drown, all alone, your comrades dead and rotting?_

Through his dying throes, he chokes out, _You asked me why I followed my human. Well, I will tell you. I followed him because he was powerful. He is greater than you are. He has rebuilt nations, dethroned vile gods of hatred and fear like yourself. To him, you are no more than a piece of dirt. To me, you are even less. I shall follow him until my bones give way and my heart ceases, and I shall follow him out of this world you have made._

_We shall see_, it replies. A gesture, a careless wish. He is no more.

_._

High above a sky the color of pitch, two points of light emerge. Time in the abyss passes strangely, and he feels as though he has been here for millennia, at least. So when the twin stars grow brighter and brighter yet, his eyes flutter and he turns away from the glow, which is so blinding and sharp and _radiant _that he, who has bathed in this dark sea for aeons (or the space of a heartbeat, he doesn't know) feels compelled to gaze elsewhere. Away from the lights, scorching in their brilliance.

His master kneels, a purple cat with star-eyes and a lean yellow rodent pacing around him, hissing. Another light. A dragon-roar. Sounds he cannot quite interpret.

_Release you? _The god laughs. _Never._

The sounds come again, but then they stabilize, take on meaning. "If you won't let us go, you will pay. I will unmake you, just like I did your creator."

_Try._

.

Glittering capsules form and re-form. Shadows fracture. It has been a day.

.

There is fire, red and purple, clashing. Lightning humming as it strikes a dome and fizzles into cascading sparks. Ten months.

.

Power fails him. He is beyond age. An eternity of night.

.

His master and the god, locked in arms, both rolling across the cave. Blood on the grounds, his own and those of the rest. They slump, wheeze, all so wretched and hurt. Here, a piece of shell, warped by intense heat. There, a piece of dangling skin with matted white fur, greasy. Below, a thread of intestine wetly curled around his leg.

The human picks up a jagged piece of stone. No pleas from the creature, who has gone silent, perhaps whispering to the boy in their own private conversation. He never hears what it has to say. As the arm falls, bringing the stone down hard, the last of his senses grow still. Nothing else is seen, or heard, or tasted. Only sleep, and a thin promise of power he had heard once so long ago, and now remembers.

* * *

><p>Blue's barely dozed off when his phone rings.<p>

"Fuck," he mutters, and reaches for it. The girl sleeping next to him doesn't seem to mind as his arm jostles her. No one calls this late, except maybe Daisy acting as his grandpa's proxy to 'check up on him' or some shit, but Daisy hasn't called in two weeks. Grumbling, he checks the caller ID and sees that it's not one of his contacts. Weird.

"Hello?"

Either they've got a bad connection, or this is a prank call. The only thing he hears on the other end is silence.

"The fuck is this? This is Blue. Whaddya want?"

Still nothing. He's feeling kind of pissed at whatever dumbass has decided to ring him up at fucking 2 AM in the morning, so he shouts a string of colorful expletives and is about to hang up when the caller finally decides to speak up.

"Blue." Really static-y.

"Yeah? Who's calling?"

"It's me. Red."

_Oh fuck. "_Red? God, where in the hell are you right now and how did you get this number?"

"I did it."

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Killed him. You know the one."

"Giovanni?" He's going from furious to incredulous. This call is most definitely _not _what he was expecting. "He's been AWOL for over a year. You saying you tracked him down and got him good? You serious right now?"

"Not Giovanni."

"Oh." The realization's staring to come. "Oh. Shit."

"Goodbye, Blue."

The line goes dead. Blue curses, holding the phone with clammy fingers, and gets out of bed. He won't be sleeping tonight.


	4. iv: you won't

#9:blastoise

* * *

><p>They arrange to meet in Viridian, on his terms.<p>

Blue sits inside the Pokemon Center lobby reading pulp fiction magazines until his eyes hurt and his legs are numb with sitting. His umbreon snores softly on his lap, its yellow rings glowing brighter as the hours tick down. The lobby, which reeks of antiseptic, houses only himself, Kuro, a pair of Ace Trainers (twins, by the look of them), and the tired-looking Joy working the night shift. He buys a burger and soda from the cafeteria when he's hungry and feeds Kuro crumbled bits of patty, picking aside lifeless pieces of lettuce and tomato.

When it's 11:00 PM, he decides that enough is enough and packs up his things to go. A whistle calls Kuro to his side, the umbreon gently illuminating their path as the two of them step outside. Viridian's nights are cold enough by the usual standards, made colder still by the oncoming winter. He wraps a scarf around his neck and ears, muttering a soft "_fuck_" as an errant breeze threatens to rip it from his fingers. Kuro leads him on, glancing back every now and then to make sure her trainer is following. In fifteen minutes, they're back at the Gym.

Red is inside, standing on the challenger's hill of the battlefield. Pikachu - Blue recalls the phantom yell of a "_Thunderbolt_!" - lies near his master's feet, barely grown larger since the last time they met. Both boy and Pokemon look the same, preserved in the clear amber of memory. Each one so utterly and perfectly still that it's chilling.

"You told me you would be at the Center," Blue says, voice flat. Kuro's ears give a twitch, and Red's electric companion turns and regards the two of them curiously. Black eyes, crimson cheek sacs, and - he hadn't noticed this before - a pink crescent running from one end of its neck to the other. The fur around the mark looks singed, dark. _What the hell_, he wonders_, did that to one of Red's_?

"I realized at the last moment that it wouldn't be a smart choice," replies his rival. "To be out there in the open like that. I was hoping you might pick up on where I was planning to go instead."

"How the fuck would I know?" he snaps. "I arranged the time and place. You agreed to it. And then a month later, I show up, but you leave me hanging for four goddamn hours and you still have the - the _nerve _to stand there and talk to me about hidden cues and all this shit. Mew, you bastard, don't beat around the bush with me. Don't pull this on me when you've been gone for as long as you have."

He tears off his scarf and throws it at Red with as much strength as his arm will allow. "_Goddammit_!"

It's childish, and he feels stupid after the fabric has settled and pooled in a sullen red heap on the ground. What was he hoping to achieve? To finally shame Red with a tantrum and some silly gesture? Red had never risen to a taunt when they were beginning their journeys, and he wouldn't have done so here - the Red who left for the mountain wouldn't have done that.

"Why did you wait so long to call? We thought you had died."

"If you wrote me off, that's your fault, not mine."

"Fuc-" Blue swallows his anger just as he feels it rising up again. That's one of the things about Red - he has the uncanny ability to hurt, terrify, or piss off almost anyone he meets, even his own mother. The last thing he wants now is to blow up at every obtuse thing Red says, even though it might be his right to.

Emotion doesn't bother Red, but strong, explosive emotion only goads him further. If he can deal with this rationally and get him out of the Gym by the end of the night, he'll call that a victory.

"Okay. Tell me what you need, and I'll do whatever's in my power to make it happen."

"Blue-"

"And don't try to talk to me like we're friends anymore." He stands his ground then, unflinching and frigid. "You gave that up a while ago."

"I'm sorry if I hurt you."

"Yeah, well, too little and too late. C'mon. Gotta wash Kuro and go to bed."

There's this strange glint in Red's eyes - he has no idea what it means, and it's gone almost as quickly as it's there. But later he'll think about it, wondering what Red was trying to say, what he was struggling to articulate; he'd never been a good talker. Not that other people tried too hard to understand him, either.

"I need to tell you something-"

Later he'll think about who was really at fault, in that whole gnarled, ugly chain of people and events, at the center of which was Red - of course, it had to be him. Who else? Who would have done it?

* * *

><p>From cold sleep he emerges onto a harsh plain, white and blinding. Can feel the heat of it, identify a faint unsettling odor that has lingered in the rock. Stirring, muscles aching but already repairing, he turns to Child. Child is unfocused. Looks across the field, sees Challenger.<p>

He remembers Challenger, proud, always ready to bash skulls with Child like clan's hatchlings, young and stupid with growing power. Now, Challenger is quiet. He shuffles forward, uncertain. Will they fight? Yes, he remembers this field from a distant time - he has fought here before. Wonders if he will do it again - can still recall the battle in the cave, where he and companions bled. Wonders if he will water this field with others' blood.

Feels Child's palm over his arm. Looks, and can see the unhappiness in Child's eyes like hard, gleaming pearls. Smells Challenger's fear peeling off of his body like skins. Fight, then. He would do this for Child this time, and the next. Until too weak to move. He would do this because Child asked it of him, and he was bound to Child forever.

Challenger is quiet as Child speaks into his ear and tells him what he must do. Agrees, snorting.

Child speaks to Challenger. Challenger speaks back. Lifts an arm and throws, onto the field, light-like-water that settles into the shape of the horned one, pawing lustily at the ground in expectation.

Challenger shouts.

He roars.


End file.
